It happens every day: Opportunities are lost, progress is forgone, ridiculousness is endorsed and evil is sown.

And it happens all because people are afraid of what others will think of them. They play it safe, and they never accomplish extraordinary things, all because they're afraid of looking foolish.

The truth is that if you have the guts to aspire to greatness, sometimes you'll experience failure. You'll look foolish sometimes. But really, who cares? Forget April Fool's Day. Here are 30 inspirational quotes about risking foolishness for greatness, all designed to get you in the right frame of mind.

2. "I learned pretty soon that it was essential to fail and be foolish." --Daniel Day-Lewis, only three-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor

3. "The greatest fools are ofttimes more clever than the men who laugh at them." --George R.R. Martin, novelist and creator of Game of Thrones

4. "I think it's my job to risk looking foolish. One of the things I've learned from the actors I've worked with is you don't get something for nothing. If you don't risk looking foolish, you'll never do anything special." --Ethan Hawke, actor and writer

5. "Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom." --Hermann Hesse, German novelist, poet, and painter

6. "You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." --Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, French novelist

7. "Until you're ready to look foolish, you'll never have the possibility of being great." --Cher

8. "People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools. " --Alice Walker, Pulitzer prize-winning novelist

9. "With too much pride a man cannot learn a thing. In and of itself, learning teaches you how foolish you are." --Criss Jami, poet and author

10. "Youth is a failing only too easily outgrown." --Agatha Christie

11. "I did not want to be taken for a fool--the typical French reason for performing the worst of deeds without remorse." --Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly, French author

17. "I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect." --Mark Twain

18. "Who's the more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?" --Alec Guiness (as Obi Wan Kenobi)

19. "Humanity is a parade of fools, and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton." --Dean Koontz, bestselling novelist

20. "Dare to wear the foolish clown face." --Frank Sinatra

21. "I was regularly advised not to go into music, that I should give up that foolish dream." --Dave Matthews

22. "The point of living and of being an optimist is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come." --Peter Ustinov, English actor and writer

23. "The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose." --Walter Lippmann, American writer

24. "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." --Epictetus, Greek philosopher

25. "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes." --Sir Winston Churchill

26. "Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational--but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?" --Judith Viorst, American author and journalist

27. "Making films is about having absolute and foolish confidence; the challenge for all of us is to have the heart of a poet and the skin of an elephant." --Mira Nair, film director

28. "Whatever you hold onto that you want to do, and that other people tell you you are foolish to want to do, don't give up." --Dermot Mulroney, actor

29. "We were young, we were foolish, we were arrogant, but we were right." --Daniel Ellsberg, political activist